


Malleable Material

by moonlightskies (blossomclouds)



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Cooking, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:47:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22149664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blossomclouds/pseuds/moonlightskies
Summary: Jace comes to the Lightwoods and Maryse has no idea how to handle him.Then he joins her in the kitchen and she thinks she might have a chance.
Relationships: Maryse Lightwood & Jace Wayland
Comments: 3
Kudos: 39





	Malleable Material

**Author's Note:**

> honestly, i'm not one to fall for the bad boy archetype, but their relationships with their (often adopted) mothers always get me.
> 
> jace & maryse are my fave relationship to explore for both of them.

The first few days after Jace’s arrival he doesn’t really leave the training area. Maryse knows that he goes to bed at some point in the night (sometimes during the day), because the cameras tell her so, but she hasn’t ever caught him lying there and his room is always left immaculate as if he was never there at all.

It concerns her, but then  almost  everything about Jace  does . She didn’t hesitate when she heard about Michael’s death, but  there are shameful moments where she wonders if it’s too late to reconsider. 

Because he laughs cruelly at Alec’s and  Isabelle ’s mishaps on the mat,  he doesn’t ever look at Maryse directly , Max is small and fragile and afraid of him and sometimes she’ll catch that look in Robert’s eyes that tells her he’s restraining himself but only barely.

He’s never eaten with them.

They try to make an effort to pull together for him at first, expect him to show up in the evening, but he never does.

Instead Maryse finds him by the punching bag, the weapons  table, the ring.  Every time h e smiles, broken and too arrogant for an eleven - year-old , and dares her to  take him on. She always smiles back and  declines. She only asks him to join them for dinner once.

It takes two weeks for him to show  signs of  any  human need. 

Maryse is alone in the kitchen, cleaning up after the other four, when he saunters in and stands next to her, completely silent. Her heart has a little thrill. She has no doubts that he could have snuck through behind her and stolen something at lightning speed.

After five minutes of anticipatory silence he goes up onto his tip toes. “What smells?”

She doesn’t look at him, is vaguely afraid that he’ll retreat if she does. “I made casserole for the rest of the family ,” she says calmly. “ You’re welcome to have some.”

Jace inhales and she almost holds her breath. In her peripheral, he scrunches up his nose and looks around her into the oven. 

Then he walks over to the fridge and pulls out two apples and a pack of milk.

She leans on  all of her training  to refrain from reacting and feels a twinge go up her spine.

* * *

He surprises her again three days later, lurking in the door this time before she turns to him. He flinches sometimes when she or Robert approach him with something like a weapon in their hands – like the kitchen knife she’s holding – and it claws at a wound deep in her heart, more than she’s told Robert so far. She puts the knife aside as casually as she can, as far away from herself as possible, and raises an eyebrow.

He does something that, in any other child, she would describe as fidgeting. Finally, he asks, “Are you making casserole again?”

“No,” she says. “You can’t make  two casseroles in one week.” She tries a cautious smile, but he looks dead serious as he takes a curious step further into the kitchen.

“You can’t?”

“Well,” she corrects, breaking against his earnestness , “you can. I happen to think you shouldn’t.”

He looks at her, head cocked. “Why?”

“There’s so much you can do with food .” She takes a step aside to give him a better view of the vegetables and bowls on the counter. “ It’s all about variety. Composition. Creation.” As soon as she says it, she feels  silly—she’s not one for big speeches or minced words, and she’s only trying to  get a child to understand that she won’t  lay a hand on him. But all of it melts away the second that Jace doesn’t laugh like he does when  Alec or  Isabelle stumble during sparring, but comes to stand next to her , crossing his arms.

“Shadowhunters aren’t meant to create.”

Maryse leans down to retrieve the peppers. This, at least, she knows how to talk about. “Right,” she says . “ But we are meant to  persevere.” She puts the carrots  in the sink and turns on the tap. “We need to sustain each other in order to survive.”

His eyes are tracking her hands with predatory attention. “Yes,” he says , and sounds stiffer than a second before. “Obviously. I  just mean—when do the others learn?”

She looks down at him, frowning at her hands scrubbing the carrots, and fury slashes  through her, quick and brutal. Michael had been her friend. She’s used to  that word tasting bitter on her  tongue . This is different.  He had been her friend and she  looks at his kid and she wants to vomit thinking of any affection she’s shown him in his lifetime.

So, she squeezes the carrots and smiles sunnily. “ Isabelle has tried her hand from time to time.  Max is still too small. Alec doesn’t like it.”

“But,” he meets her eyes, hooking into her and drawing the air out of her lungs, “how’s he going to sustain himself?”

His eyes shoot back to her gripping the carrots. She has the bad feeling that she’ll snap them in half if she holds them any tighter. With some effort she forces a chuckle. “He’ll most likely have someone do it. He’ll run the Institute some day and maybe his wife will like cooking. He’ll be fine.”  _ Don’t worry,  _ she almost says and then doesn’t.

Jace nods. The crease between his eyebrows deepens and he juts out his chin. His jaw ticks when he grits his teeth. His arms are still crossed. “Teach me.”

“Certainly,” she says. “But first, what’s the magic word?”

* * *

Jace is a natural, which shouldn’t surprise her as much as it does.  Or maybe, she reconsiders, he’s not so much a natural as he is the most dedicated, precise child she’s ever  met. In the dark of the night she can even admit to herself that she understands what Michael saw.  There is a  creature in Jace that is  _ alive _ , driving him forward to climb into the sky. It’s addicting to watch him succeed.

Maryse tries. She  _ tries  _ to check herself. Jace still flinches away from her at times  and that’s the most effective deterrent, so she doesn’t raise her voice or her eyebrows and every time she touches  him she makes sure that he can keep track of her hand and ward her off at any time. But before Jace came along she’s already had three children and that makes it harder to  be so careful all the time.

Still, when they’re in the kitchen she begins to feel like they’re  growing a careful comfort just between the two of them . In her most optimistic  moments she thinks that it might even be spilling over.  He’s not mocking Alec and I sabelle as much. Once she watche s how he quickly  and efficiently corrects  Isabelle ’s stance and she ends up pinning him. He wins in the end, but Isabelle’s eyes gleam the entire rest of the day.

It’s still one of the hardest things Maryse has ever had to do, but at this rate she feels like one day it might not be.

Jace looks up at her from the kitchen table. “Don’t forget to stir,” he says with his judgmental eyebrows. She shakes herself and turns back to the pot. While she tries to make sure the Risotto doesn’t burn silence blankets the room again. It takes a second before she notices that Jace has stopped cutting up the fruit. She hasn’t slept in forty hours thanks to a large-scale demon attack and having to apply three  Iratzes so her reaction time has slowed to worrying levels.

Before she can ask, Jace clears his throat. “Maryse?”

“Mom,” she corrects automatically.

“ Mh ,” he hums and waits another thirty seconds before he speaks up again.  “How many are there? Of me?”

She keeps stirring. “What do you mean?”

“None of the other guys are ever down here .”

She furrows her brow. “ Isabelle is here all the time. Emilia made dinner just two days ago.  Irina’s  strawberry paste is your  favorite dessert.”

“Yes, but they’re all—” He hitches on a little pause. “ _ Girls. _ ”

Maryse digs into the Risotto a little bit harder. Fear that he’ll bolt if she faces him sits in the back of her neck. “That’s true,” she says, carefully conversational. “But if you’re asking me if cooking isn’t a man’s job, let me ask you who you think will come out on top in a fight eventually: the person who’s learned to bring a knife to every fight or the person who knows how to handle a knife in every way possible?”

Jace makes a little scoffing sound.  “I would beat  them both .”

The crooked corners of her mouth soften out and quirk up. “ Of course you would,” she says,  and feels horribly inadequate, but he never asks again and leans into her when she ruffles his hair after they get finished with the dishes.

Overall, she concludes, they’re getting there.


End file.
